The Apple TV+ series ‘The Big Door Prize’ tells the story of a town called Deerfield, where odd things start to happen following the appearance of a Morpho machine. In exchange for two dollars, fingerprints, and social security number, it provides a person’s life potential. This prompts most of the townspeople to transition from the lives they have been leading to the destinies that the Morpho machine promises. As the first season ends, many of the mysteries of the story remain unsolved. One of them is the blue dots that appear on certain characters’ skin. Here is what we think about it. SPOILERS AHEAD.
What Are the Blue Skin Dots?
It seems that the writers of ‘The Big Door Prize’ actively avoid discussing the blue dots in season 1, though they quickly establish how important these things are in the narrative. It’s safe to assume that the writers intend to address this in future seasons. For now, we can only speculate on what they can be.
In season 1, three characters have developed the blue dots: Dusty (Chris O’Dowd), Mr. Johnson (Patrick Kerr), and Hana (Ally Maki). Dusty notices three tiny dots on his lower abdomen in the mirror of the washroom and becomes concerned. In episode 9, we see at least four blue dots have broken out on Mr. Johnson’s skin when he grabs a sword and tries to pry open the back of the Morpho machine. He seems to get electrocuted and suffers a cardiac episode.
The blue dots that Mr. Johnson has are bigger than Dusty’s, but they are no match to what Hana has. Toward the end of the season, as the Morpho machine seems to undergo a change, Hana appears in the store and claims that the machine has never done this before. We see the skin of her back is riddled with blue dots.
One explanation for the blue dots is that they appear on people linked to the Morpho machine. We now know Hana has been to several towns where the Morpho machine has appeared. Perhaps she is an employee of the Morpho company, tasked to take the machine from one town to the next. As for Mr. Johnson, the machine appears in his store. When Dusty notices the blue dots, he has barely heard about the machine. Perhaps, the blue dots break out on every resident of the town where the machine appears. So, if Dusty has the dots, we can probably assume that other residents of Deerfield do as well. If we are to follow this logic, the blue dots are supposed to get bigger and more in number as days become weeks. And that’s precisely what is happening to Dusty.
A second explanation is that the blue dots appear on the skin of the people who actively seek to oppose the Morpho machine. At the start of the series, Dusty is dismayed by seeing people around him taking the Morpho cards seriously. This is until his curiosity improves, and he visits the store to check his life potential. We can presume that the dots appear on Mr. Johnson’s skin after he attacks the machine with the sword.
As a character, Hana is shrouded in mystery. If we want to explain her relationship with the machine through the antagonistic angle, we can speculate that she has come to resent the connection she has with it. The third possible explanation is that the dots are psychosomatic. There is nothing supernatural about them. They appear on a selected few people as the result of complete coincidence. Or perhaps, the people who have developed them have similar mental health issues.
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